Iraq Denounces Un Oil Sale Plan

Baghdad Leaves Room To Accept Proposal

The Iraqi government Saturday denounced a United Nations plan to allow limited sales of Iraqi oil, and organized large anti-American demonstrations in Baghdad.

"I think the voices of the masses have expressed the Iraqi stand," the speaker of the Iraqi parliament, Saadi Mahdi Saleh, told Associated Press Television during one rally in Baghdad. "What you heard from the people is rejection to this decision."

The rally, before a crowd that appeared to reporters on the scene to be made up largely of government employees, was similar to those Iraq staged before the beginning of the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

It is not clear whether Saturday's apparently orchestrated reaction was intended as Iraq's final word on the proposal. It would allow Iraq to sell $2 billion in oil over six months to help pay for food, medicine and other relief supplies to ease the effect on the Iraqi people of the international economic sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council, the highest governmental body under President Saddam Hussein, denounced the UN resolution. UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali had welcomed the resolution as a first step toward the broader lifting of sanctions as Iraq meets requirements set out in other resolutions.

But after meeting with Hussein, the council did not say that it had formally rejected the plan.

Instead, it sent the plan to the Iraqi parliament for action, calling the resolution "more dangerous" than previous resolutions offering Baghdad limited and monitored sales for purely humane reasons. The Iraqi parliament is not known for opposing Hussein's will.

Hussein has been holding out for a proposal on easing sanctions that would be wider and less restrictive, to give Iraq the right to sell as much oil as it wished and spend the money in any way it chooses.

Under current Security Council resolutions, that would not be possible until a monitoring team has certified that Iraq is fully complying with its instructions to eliminate the country's weapons of mass destruction and until the monitors are allowed to conduct surveillance to prevent any new weapons programs.

Last week, Iraq suffered a setback in its hopes when the monitors said Iraq may have been concealing a biological weapons program or plans to begin one since the late 1980s.

In 1991, the UN proposed a more restrictive plan for easing sanctions that would have allowed Iraq to resume limited oil exports to pay for emergency needs. But the Iraqi government rejected the deal as an infringement on its sovereignty.